Blog Tour Review: BY A CHARM & A CURSE by Jaime Questell

Welcome to my stop on the By a Charm & a Curse blog tour! I was initially drawn in by the evocative cover, which promises a magical and dangerous story that takes place in one of my favorite settings, the circus. I really enjoyed this atmospheric YA story, and you can read my review below.

By a Charm & a Curse by Jaime Questell
Release date: February 6 2018
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Pages: 300

Le Grand’s Carnival Fantastic isn’t like other traveling circuses. It’s bound by a charm, held together by a centuries-old curse, that protects its members from ever growing older or getting hurt. Emmaline King is drawn to the circus like a moth to a flame…and unwittingly recruited into its folds by a mysterious teen boy whose kiss is as cold as ice.

Forced to travel through Texas as the new Girl in the Box, Emmaline is completely trapped. Breaking the curse seems like her only chance at freedom, but with no curse, there’s no charm, either—dooming everyone who calls the Carnival Fantastic home. Including the boy she’s afraid she’s falling for.

Everything—including his life—could end with just one kiss.

Buy the book here!

My Review:

The nitty-gritty: A dark and dangerous tale, perfect for fans of circus and carnival stories.

The moment I saw the cover for By a Charm and a Curse, I wanted to read it. And the fact that the story revolves around a travelling circus, with comparisons to The Night Circus and Caraval, didn’t hurt either. I was delighted to discover a dark, magical tale that wasn’t quite what I expected, but which turned out to be a compelling page-turner. Like many young adult novels, there is a romance which is central to the story, but knowing what I was getting myself into, I took the romance in stride.

The story alternates between two characters, a handyman named Benjamin, who has been with the carnival his entire life, and a young teen named Emma who visits Le Grande’s Carnival Fantastic one evening with her friends and has the terrible misfortune to run afoul of a decades-old curse, which binds her to the carnival until she can pass the curse to some other unsuspecting innocent.

Sidney is “The Boy in the Box,” saddled for the past fifty years with the curse that, along with a charm, holds the carnival together. Sidney works in a fortune teller’s box every night, hoping to meet someone who he can trick into taking on the curse, thus freeing him from a life devoid of feeling. You see, ever since Sidney was tricked by the last holder of the curse, he has lost his sense of touch, smell and taste. He’s little more than a mannequin, able to speak and move about, but without his senses he feels as if he’s lost his humanity.

But one night, Emma wanders over to his box, and he immediately knows she’s the one he can finally pass the curse to. His plan works like a charm, he carefully follows the steps necessary to transfer the curse to another person, and before she knows it, Emma has unwittingly become a part of the carnival.

But as Emma slowly comes to accept her new life, and makes friends with the other carnival folk, something odd is happening. Le Grande’s has always been a place of safety due to the charm, but suddenly, accidents are happening, machinery is breaking down, and everyone is on edge. There may be a way to repair the charm, but first the carnival must travel to the home of the woman responsible for it in the first place.

The story starts fairly tame, but then the author throws in a doozy of a plot twist when the curse is transferred over to Emma, and things get real dark, real quick! I loved the sense of danger that permeates the story, and I never really relaxed after that moment. As the charm starts falling apart, Questell puts all her characters in danger, which only added to the excitement and tension.

Because Emma is now The Girl in the Box, everyone understands that she is a vital part of their health and success, and so they make a point to take care of her and bring her into the inner circle.  I was a little surprised at how quickly she adapts and accepts her fate—because really, this awful thing has happened to her and she had absolutely no choice in the matter—but I’m sure her growing attraction to Ben had something to do with it. And now that Sidney is free from the curse, it’s also his duty to help Emma adjust. I couldn’t understand at first why he was hanging around, after all, he’d been cursed for fifty years! But there is a reason he’s reluctant to leave, and the author throws in a twist that involves Sidney and Ben’s mother Audrey that I did not see coming.

I liked most of the characters, and I especially had a soft spot for a couple of trick horseback riders named Gin and Whiskey (!) and one of the fortune tellers named Pia. And despite Sidney’s underhanded trickery in getting Emma to take over the curse, I did grow to like him. He has a sorrowful past with one of the other carnival members that gave him an air of regret and sadness, and he really was good at looking out for Emma and showing her the ropes. A family of acrobats, the Moretti Brothers, act as the “bad guys” of the story. They are serious bullies and not a single character escapes their brand of nastiness, unfortunately.

And it wouldn’t be a YA story without some romance. Emma and Ben hit it off right away, and I could see the romance coming a mile away, but I thought the author handled it pretty well. I loved the idea of a warm-blooded human falling in love with a cold, unfeeling mannequin-like girl, which I thought was a great way to add something different and unusual to what could have been standard romance. After all, Emma is only cold on the outside. Inside she’s just the same as she was before the curse.

I have to admit I had to suspend my disbelief for parts of this story. I had a little trouble wrapping my head around the idea of “a charm and a curse” that work in tandem together. Questell comes up with some complicated rules as to how these elements work, and they didn’t always make sense. But in the end, the characters and the atmospheric storytelling won out, and I brushed away the “rules” in order to enjoy the tale.

This is a fairly quick read, but Questell packs a lot into it. If you love your stories on the dark side, the By a Charm and a Curse should not be missed.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

About the Author:

JAIME QUESTELL grew up in Houston, Texas, where she escaped the heat and humidity by diving into stacks of Baby Sitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High books. She has been a book seller (fair warning: book lovers who become book sellers will give half their paychecks right back to their employers), a professional knitter, a semi-professional baker, and now works as a graphic designer in addition to writing.

Follow Jaime:  Website | Instagram | Twitter | Goodreads | Newsletter